RUI: Improving Acoustic Estimates of Antarctic Krill Populations

南极磷虾是南大洋食物网中至关重要的一环。除了作为较高营养级别(鸟类、鳍足类、鲸鱼)的猎物外，它们还被几个不同的国家用于商业捕捞。作为这一管理战略的一部分，每年都会对磷虾种群进行多次声学调查。虽然声学方法比其他采样技术有几个优点，但将声学后向散射信息转换为动物数量是一个困难的问题。该项目旨在通过使用小船调查收集声学、气象、水文和视频观测数据来提高南极磷虾声学调查的准确性。通过利用美国南极海洋生物资源(AMLR)计划的包租研究船，该项目将对利文斯顿岛周围的现成和现成区域进行采样，重点是南极洲谢里夫角两侧的两个海底峡谷。将在这些水域建造和部署一个由五个SPAR浮标组成的阵列，以收集ADCP和声学后向散射数据的长时间序列(数周至数月)。这些数据，连同小船调查的水文信息，将被用来确定上绕极深水是否沿着海底峡谷向上移动，并增加该地区的生产力。这种深水流入的时空变异性将被确定，以了解控制这些水域磷虾丰度的强迫作用。这项工作的结果将提高科学家和渔业管理人员使用声学数据估计磷虾丰度的能力。此外，近岸磷虾种群的重要性以及控制其分布和丰度的因素将得到更好的理解。这项研究还将改善PI的母校之一--安瑞的学生的本科教育体验。这些学生不仅将参与涉及数据分析的研究项目，而且该项目中使用的仪器将部署在海外，使学生能够接触到现代海洋采样方法，并让他们体验收集真实世界数据的好处和复杂性。这些数据将被用于学院的几门课程，在这一努力中开发的教学材料将被放在一个网站上，供其他地方的教育工作者使用。浮标数据也将在网上免费提供。

Antarctic krill are a vital link in the food web of the Southern Ocean. In addition to serving as prey for the higher trophic levels (birds, pinnipeds, whales), they are also harvested commercially by several different nations. As a part of this management strategy, numerous acoustic surveys of the krill stock are conducted annually. While acoustic methods provide several advantages over other sampling techniques, the conversion of acoustic backscatter information to numerical abundance of animals is a difficult problem. This project seeks to improve the accuracy of acoustic surveys of Antarctic krill by using a small-boat survey to collect acoustic, meteorological, hydrographic, and video observation data. By utilizing the United States Antarctic Marine Living Resources (AMLR) Program's chartered research vessel, this project will sample off- and on-shelf regions around Livingston Island focusing on two submarine canyons which flank Cape Shirreff, Antarctica. An array of five spar buoys will be constructed and deployed in these waters to collect long (weeks to months) time-series of ADCP and acoustic backscatter data. These data, along with the hydrographic information from the small-boat survey, will be used to determine whether Upper Circumpolar Deep Water is traveling up the submarine canyons and increasing the productivity of this region. The spatial and temporal variability of this influx of deep water will be determined to understand the forcing functions which control the abundance of krill in these waters. The results from this work will improve the ability of scientists and fishery managers to use acoustic data to estimate krill abundance. Furthermore, the importance of near-shore krill populations, and the factors that control their distribution and abundance, will be better understood. This research will also improve the undergraduate educational experience of students at one of the PI's home institutions, which is an RUI. These students will not only participate in research projects involving data analysis, but instrumentation used in this project will be deployed off shore and will provide students with access to modern oceanographic sampling methods and allow them to experience the benefits and complications of collecting real-world data. These data will be utilized in several courses at the college, and the pedagogical materials developed in this endeavor will be placed on a web site for educators elsewhere to use. The buoy data will also be freely available on-line.